The US government awarded Lockheed Martin a seven-year contract worth up to $35 billion to quadruple production of THAAD missile-defense interceptors.

The deal activates a January framework agreement and lifts annual output from 96 interceptors toward 400, with work spanning Dallas, Sunnyvale, Troy, and Camden.

It follows separate Lockheed deals to ramp PAC-3 MSE and Precision Strike Missile output as the Pentagon races to refill stockpiles drawn down against Iran.

VisionWave unveiled two UK-built autonomous platforms at Eurosatory 2026: the TALON aerial system and the D-FLY counter-drone interceptor, which operate within its STRATUM ecosystem.

TALON handles surveillance, communications relay, and sensing in GPS-degraded conditions, while D-FLY is built to hunt and knock down hostile drones.

The pairing tracks buyer demand for connected systems over standalone gear, and European interest in allied, in-region manufacturing.

Chinese supplier Harbin Xinguang displayed two man-portable anti-drone lasers, the Lijian II and III, at a Beijing defense exhibition this week.

Each unit weighs 25 to 30 kilograms, draws roughly 2 kilowatts, costs about $295,000, and uses AI for targeting cued by external radar.

The company said the lasers are already placed at some Chinese facilities, including military airfields, though the specifications remain independently unverified.

Marines with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit had multiple firefights while defending the US embassy in Haiti, their commander told reporters.

Col. Tom Trimble said the unit, deployed from August to December 2025 amid gang violence, received and returned fire repeatedly with no Marines hurt.

The unit, equipped with small drones, was later relieved by a security team and went on to support operations against Venezuela's Maduro.

The House Appropriations Committee approved a roughly $1 trillion fiscal 2027 defense spending bill on a 34-27 party-line vote.

Members also adopted an amendment renaming the Defense Department the "Department of War," a change estimated to cost up to $125 million.

The bill obligates $11.4 billion for critical munitions and heads to the full House as the administration pursues a larger $1.5 trillion budget.

The Pentagon released a strategy requiring all systems to support post-quantum cryptography or be phased out by the end of 2030.

CIO Kirsten Davies called network modernization "only a first step" toward readying the military against future quantum decryption threats.

The guidance landed a day after two White House executive orders aimed at accelerating US quantum development and hardening federal encryption.

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